Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 18:25:56 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: "Julian H. Stacey" <jhs@FreeBSD.org> Cc: p.richards@elsevier.co.uk, current@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: tcl -- what's going on here. Message-ID: <4665.835320356@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 20 Jun 1996 02:02:44 %2B0200." <199606200002.CAA04323@vector.jhs.no_domain>
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> It's time we had FreeBSD Annual Election Of Officials. Look, Julian, I'm sure you mean well but honestly, all of this looks suspiciously like an artificial system constructed for the benefit of those members of FreeBSD's user base who would like to be able to steer the wagon without ever having to feed the horse. The people who "drive" FreeBSD, autocratically or otherwise, are the ones who put the actual work into making it move. This is a system of leadership by example, and if people like what a given person (or set of persons) are doing with the project then they follow them and that person or persons are now, for all intents and purposes, "the leaders." If one of them should falter or slow down to the point where nobody's following them then they're no longer leading and you don't need an election to tell you what common sense should have already dictated. You go find somebody else people seem to respect, push them to the front and say "here, you do it now." If somebody more "presidential" than I should come along and clearly demonstrates that he or she can and does want to do a better job, heck, it's theirs. I'll blissfully go back to having hacking code be my sole worry in life. But award the post by merit, not by picking the candidate who's demonstrated the greatest skill at electioneering. Assuming that the electorate is smart enough to elect the best man is how people like Ronald Reagan come to power. Don't also mix up what the FreeBSD "officers" do and what an individual committer (who may or may not also be an officer) might run off and do without reasonable notification. ANY of the people with commit privileges has the power to create something like the recent tcl contraversy, and most of the older committers have in fact each gotten their fingers burned at least once. There is an entirely separate type of self-discipline required and has nothing to do with elections or management structure. Jordan
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